Study: Kids who watch adult TV may have sex earlier

The younger children are exposed to content intended for adults in television and movies, the earlier they become sexually active during adolescence, according to a new study released by Children’s Hospital Boston.

Would you allow your toddler to watch ‘Mad Men’?

The longitudinal study consisted of 754 children between ages 6 and 18. Researchers tracked the participants at two stages: once during childhood and again five years later between ages 12 to 18 to see how much adult television they were watching on a sample weekday and sample weekend day. The participants’ onset of sexual activity was then followed during the second stage. The study found that for every hour the youngest group of children watched adult-targeted content over the two sample days, their chances of having sex during early adolescence increased by 33 percent.

“Television and movies are among the leading sources of information about sex and relationships for adolescents,” says the study’s lead author Dr. Hernan Delgado, a fellow in the Division of Adolescent/Young Adult Medicine at Children’s Hospital Boston. “Our research shows that their sexual attitudes and expectations are influenced much earlier in life.”

But should we only be pointing fingers at television programming and movies? “It seems to me that this correlation may have more to do with uninvolved parents than with TV,” writes Hannah Tennant-Moore in a Babble column reporting on the study. “Any six-year-old who is allowed to watch several hours of adult television in a day is not likely to have parents who will talk to him or her about sex later in life.”

Tennant-Moore adds: “I’m certainly no fan of the majority of mainstream television–particularly not as entertainment for six-year-olds–but it would be much easier, and perhaps more effective, to raise awareness about the need for parents to openly discuss healthy sexual behavior with their kids than it would be to substantially shift the entire foundation of popular culture.”

I think Tennant-Moore has a point. We really can’t change pop culture. The drunken promiscuity portrayed on shows such as The Hills and The O.C. is here to stay, and somewhere along the line our children will catch a glimpse of it whether you want them to or not. Yes, it’s wise to monitor your children’s media but it’s also smart to assume that they’re going to see some inappropriate stuff and to talk to them about what they might see. When you’re watching Mad Men late at night and your 8-year-old wakes up and walks into the room, you never know what Don Draper is going to be up to at the time. You might want to prepare her for it.